Cleaning Up the Streets
A boot kicked up against the wall while the laces were tightened and knotted. A rifle, cleaned and oiled, loaded with a fresh clip of custom cartridges. A silver crucifix dangled from a steel chain around Gina's neck.
The Hunters were preparing for war. Akira sat at a table in his karate gi, nunchaku dangling from his belt, sharpening his knives with a whetstone. Bart entered with a cardboard box. He opened it and removed a pair of fingerless black leather gloves. He put one on and then sat clenching and unclenching his fists, looking at the red cross on the back. 'Jesus' was written vertically in black letters within the cross, and 'yes' was written horizontally, the 'yes' sharing 'Jesus'' 'e'. He tossed Brian a pair. Brian looked at the back. The gloves white, made of synthetic fivers, and bore white Latin crosses surrounded with the words 'Ave Crux, Spes Unica'
"Hail Holy Cross, our only hope," Lisa said. Bart handed her a white pair. She read the back, "Speak with the Dead."
"I guess these are standard-issue for the Vatican's anti-Undead units, right?" she asked, somewhat put-off by the combination of militancy and morbidity expressed by the gloves.
"Hey," Brian said, grinning, "We Catholics know how to die in style."
Jessica Lovejoy sat with her friends at Bloater's. The other girls were lively and cheerful, laughing and chatting and downing jell-o shots. Jess was sullen, silent, as she nursed her cosmopolitan. Her friends went to go dance, leaving her alone. She sighed, and watched them, chin resting on her hand? She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned her head quickly. Two women were now sitting across from her. One was a young, busty brunette with a round, rose-cheeked face and a pink dress, the other was thin and dark, with lanky black hair, ashen skin, and sunken eyes. The brunette smiled and raised her martini glass. The dark one sipped from a dark red wine glass.
"Who are you?"
The woman in pink set down her glass and answered, smiling.
"'Now wakes the hour that sleeps the swan,
Behold the dream; the dream is gone'."
Jessica stared
"'Pillow of Winds'," the woman said.
"Right, Pink Floyd, from Meddle," she said, nodding, "We played that today. You listen to the show?"
"We listen to your voice and your mind, your heart, body, and soul. The walls of fabric and flesh are no barrier. We see your soul fester, and it makes me salivate," the dark woman hissed, ending with a slurping noise. Jessica's upper lip curled in disgust and confusion.
"Mariya is such a lively one, isn't she?" the pink woman laughed.
"Who the hell are you? Get the hell away!"
The young woman chortled throatily. She held up her right hand, palm up. She closed it, then blew upon it, opening her hand. Something dark flew out of it, buzzing and clicking. It landed on the rim of Jess' glass, back facing her. A skeletal face starred up at her from her cosmopolitan.
Jessica tried to get up, but the brown-haired woman grabbed her hand. Jessica felt a cold sensation shoot up her arm, and found herself unable to move from her chair. The dark-haired one laughed, elongated canine teeth.
"Vampires," Jessica mouthed, her words barely escaping as a faint whisper.
The hideous, hissing moth began to crawl around the rim of Jessica's glass, fluttering its wings while emitting a shrill squeak.
"Yes…we serve the Master, the father of all Undead. I come to you, because we need your help. We need the Hunter's killed. At this very moment, your old boyfriend Bart and his little chums are slaughtering dozens of our fellow vampires."
"Them and the two blood traitors."
"Yes, Alucard. You know who that is."
The death's head moth stopped its circling. It turned to face the inside of the glass, and extended its proboscis. It proceeded to drain Jessica's glass, and then fly back into Carmilla's waiting hand.
"The Master is kind, Jessica. While we would have gladly killed you, he has offered you a gift. So, you have a choice."
She moved her hand over the glass. She closed her hand over the moth. Jessica heard a sickening crunching, then a woman's scream. She closed her eyes, sobbing. Through the loud music and the dozens of conversations around her, she heard a trickling sound. She opened her eyes, and saw blood falling from Carmilla's hand, into her glass. The blood reached the rim of the glass, then stopped.
"It's your decision. Either you drink from the true cup of everlasting life, and live forever young, forever beautiful, forever healthy, with strength, agility, and clarity no mortal can ever know…or Mariya tears out your throat and we lap up your filthy slut's blood from the tile floor, and in the end, you'll come back as a ghoul, our Undead bitch for all eternity. So, Jessica Lovejoy, what do you say?"
Jessica watched as a last drop of blood fell from her hand and splashed in the glass.
Bart emptied half a magazine in a vampire standing along a garden wall of a vacant house in the heart of Shelbyville. The vampire screamed and fell. In the garden, Gina and Mel fought with five vampires. Gina had two pinned behind the shed and the wall with her rifle. Three ran at Mel, clawed hands grasping and slashing. Mel drew his rapier and charged. The first one came within striking distance and raised its talons to shred Mel's face. Mel struck the vampire twice with a quick flick-flit of his rapier, and knocked his hand aside with his dagger. The vampire stumbled and fell. Then came the second one. Mel dodged a hook punch from him and slashed across the backs of his ankles, cutting his Achilles tendons. Mel quickly stabbed the vampire in the side and rolled past him. He spun onto his feet, and then lunged, piercing the Midian through the heart. The creature crumbled into ashes. The first and second vampires' superficial wounds had already healed, and they came back at Mel. Mel held them back with quick strikes as they circled around him like wolves on the hunt. Mel remained calm. He knew that they could not circle forever, that sooner or later, one would pounce, followed by the other one. If I can kill the first one that pounces, it may give the other one enough pause to give me the chance to kill it. I must keep moving, keep giving them little gashes and cuts. Those take energy to heal, and in addition to weakening them slightly, the pain angers them, increasing the chances that one will make a mistake.
The vampire behind him pounced. Mel turned held out his blade, steadying it with his free hand pressed against the flat of it. The point struck just below a rib. The rapier arched. The blade began to penetrate, and the arching smoothed out. The vampire's fierce snarl twisted into a grimace of pain, and it disintegrated. The other vampire tackled Mel to the ground. Mel grabbed the pistol on his left hip and fired it from the holster, blasting a hole through the vampire's pelvis. The vampire rolled off of Mel, clutching its groin and wailing. Mel drew his right-hand pistol and shot it through the head, killing it.
One of the vampire's Gina was holding ate bay leapt over the tool shed and raced towards her. Gina's rifle was out of ammo. She dropped it as the vampire jumped into the air, and came towards her, kicking at her face. She blocked each kick, left-right. The vampire landed, and threw a kick. Gina ducked, and threw a punch, catching the vampire in the nose. The vampire didn't even blink, and punched her hard in the gut. Gina's armored vest softened the blow, but Gina still felt the air knocked out of her lungs. She barely managed to block the clawed swipes the vampire threw at her. It brought a fist back and unleashed a forceful punch. Gina grabbed the arm and used its momentum to twist her attacker around. The pulled the vampire against her. The vampire reached over it's shoulders with both hands and grabbed Gina's head in a crushing grip. Gina pulled out her knife and stabbed it in the chest. The vampire let out a faint gasp, and then keeled over. The second vampire raced across the lawn towards her. Gina clenched her teeth.
"Eat this!"
She drew her pistol and fired away, unloading the clip into the vampire's torso.
"Good work, Miss Vendeitti," Mel panted.
"You okay, Sideshow?"
"Fine. Also, that is the first time someone has ever called me 'Sideshow'-"
"Really?"
"-And I hate it!"
"Oh. Sorry."
Patty kissed Carrie good night.
"Bye," Carrie whispered, smiling.
"Night, babe."
Carrie opened the door, and Patty walked outside.
She reached to the bungee hook on her belt for her keys.
"Evening, Miss Bouvier," purred a male voice from the trees near Carrie's fence
"Who's there?"
A black mist drifted down from top of one of the pine trees, writhing, twisting, and contorting. It landed in front of her, a small black blob. It stretched upwards, reaching six feet in height. The black thing exploded into a flock of bats. The bat's scattered, chirping and fluttering while Patty covered her face with her hand and tried to beat them away with her free hand. The bats congregated before her, forming a solid, shifting mass. The mass became uniformly black and still, and then, Alucard.
"Evening, ma'am."
"Who are you?" Patty barked, her anger masking her fear.
"The Bird of Hermes is my name
Eating my wings to make me tame."
"I am the Vampire Alucard. I come to you now, a servant of evil, acting as an emissary of goodness."
"Huh?"
He held out his hand in front of her face. Patty blinked, and the houses, trees, cars, and streetlamps were gone. She was standing with Alucard in space. Between them lay a luminous white strand, splintering and branching like a tree root.
"I am indeed a real vampire. I am not a lame teenage punk dressing up and playing Undead, or some pervert who gets off drinking blood. I am a corpse that drinks the life from the living."
He grinned, revealing his fangs and making his eyes glow red. Patty recoiled, her cigarette falling from her mouth.
"Powerful vampires such as myself are gifted with prescience. We can see all possible paths that human history will take. However, we cannot see what will certainly happen, only what may. Furthermore, our powers are blocked. Some moments, some people, whole families and centuries lie beyond my sight."
"The Master has risen. He was the first to renounce God and drink the blood of his own kind. His descendants make up two-thirds of the vampire population. He now stalks the night, gathering all evil things to him. He can see one future that is blocked to me. What is in it, I can guess well enough, but the way it begins is the same as all other possible futures."
"What?" Patty asked, her head swimming. Is this a dream? Vampires? The Master? Cripes, what is all this? It's just to much.
Alucard looked down, his relfective glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose.
"With Shelbyville and Springfield being overrun with the dead, and the Master declaring himself lord."
Patty took a step backwards, shaking her head. She looked up, and was on Carrie's street once more.